Research Agenda for Environmental Geopolitics

Edited by Shannon O’Lear, Professor, Department of Geography and Atmospheric Science, and Environmental Studies Program, University of Kansas, US

'This book maps out new research terrain by showing how geopolitics has environmental dimensions that go well beyond the national state and international relations. The rich chapters present case studies that put flesh on the bones of the programmatic arguments of Shannon O'Lear.'--Noel Castree, Manchester University, UK and the University of Wollongong, Australia'A Research Agenda for Environmental Geopolitics lays bare our assumptions about what we mean by environment and by geopolitics. O'Lear and her contributors give us the tools to make explicit the impacts of power, actors, and interests in shaping placed-based decision-making and policy (in)action.'--Geoff Dabelko, Ohio University, US'This book offers refreshing, new perspectives on environmental geopolitics that go far beyond established concerns with global environmental governance and local political ecology. In addition to shedding light on how politics influences the way we manage the environment, O'Lear and contributors reveal the myriad ways in which politics shapes how we understand and encounter the socio-natural world in which we live.'--Philip Steinberg, Durham University, UK

• Contents:1 Environmental geopolitics: an introduction to questions and researchapproaches 1Shannon O’LearPART I INTERPRETING AND MEASURING THE ENVIRONMENT2 Getting the measure of nature: the inconspicuous geopolitics ofenvironmental measurement 16Brendon Blue and Marc Tadaki3 Science, territory, and the geopolitics of high seas conservation 30Noella J. Gray, Leslie Acton, and Lisa M. Campbell4 The geopolitics of environmental global mapping services: an analysisof Global Forest Watch 44Birgit Schneider and Lynda OlmanPART II POWER, KNOWLEDGE AND HUMAN–ENVIRONMENT INTERACTIONS5 Conflicts, commodities and the environmental geopolitics of supply chains 59Philippe Le Billon and Lauren Shykora6 Underground geopolitics: science, race, and territory in Peru during thelate nineteenth century 74Matthew Himley7 Local knowledges and environmental governance: making space foralternative futures in the Arctic circumpolar region and theMekong River Basin 88Coleen A. Fox and Christopher SneddonPART III OVERCOMING SELECTIVE SPATIAL FOCUS8 The geopolitics of transportation in the melting Arctic 105Frédéric Lasserre and Pierre-Louis Têtu9 Environmental geopolitics of rumor: the sociality of uncertaintyduring northern Thailand’s smoky season 121Mary Mostafanezhad and Olivier Evrard10 Digging deep: crossing scale in the Georgian mining industry 136Jesse Swann-Quinn11 Looking ahead: environmental geopolitics research 151Shannon O’Lear, Simon Dalby, Corey Johnson, and Stacy D. VanDeveerIndex 167